Troy Blacklaws' first novel, "Karoo Boy," set in 1970s South Africa, is distinctly adult for a coming-of-age story. When facing the double-barrel shotgun of a girlfriend's father, a 14-year-old boy's problems transcend mere angst.

Reflecting the extremes of the country in which it's set, the story opens with an idyllic beach scene. "The air smells of coconut suntan oil and ribs on the braai," narrates Douglas. He and his twin brother, Marsden, read, sketch and play cricket with their parents. "To the onlooker, Marsden and I are xeroxed, one like the other," Douglas says.

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Two paragraphs later, Marsden is dead.

The writing is consistently evocative, rich with slang from the linguistically cross-pollinated nation. Voetsak, bakkie, stompie, veldskoens, ingcibi, kerk, atchar, koppies, dwaal and countless other words that don't show up in American dictionaries are included. The descriptions are as forceful as they are colorful. When he returns to school, Douglas comments, "I do not want the boys at school staring at me, the undead twin."

The death immediately fractures the family. Douglas' father leaves for parts unknown. "From now on you have to play for yourself, Douglas," he announces. Douglas' mother takes him from Cape Town to the Karoo, the South African outback, because "All she wants to do is paint." Douglas is not so enamored of the exotic setting: "I do not see charm in this landscape of stone and dust and thorn."

Like his family, the country is described as every-man-for-himself. A male teacher, under the pretense of consoling Douglas, comes on to him. New classmates leave a rotting jackal in his water tank and put a dead lizard in his peanut butter and honey sandwich. They steal Douglas' clothes and stuff him into a wicker basket, through which a dog pees for good measure. In a flashback scene, a circumcision ceremony is described, in which a boy, the moment before being sliced by the ingcibi, looks for support in his father's face. It's "as cold as a mask."

Douglas is more observant than introspective. He has frequent flashbacks, but he does not dwell on his misfortune. What sustains him is a friendship with a black "petroljockey" named Moses, and a crush on a schoolgirl named Marika.

Through Douglas' interactions with Moses and Marika, Blacklaws re-enacts obscene apartheid-era attitudes. "My pa does not want me to talk to blacks. He says blacks smell, and they rape white girls if they catch them in the veld," says Marika. The two youths are more curious than hateful, though, and their free spiritedness endangers them to Marika's father.

The contrast between Moses and Marika's father could not be greater. Moses is a perpetual victim, beaten by the whites he serves; Marika's father is bigotry incarnate. At times, they too closely resemble stock characters.

Consistent with the grown-up world that Douglas inhabits are his romances, which are alternately innocent and erotic. "Marika kisses me on the cheek. My heart flies a boomerang loop around the windmill," Douglas writes. Later, "Marika tugs her dress over her head and hangs it in the thorny mimosa." Douglas is sensitive; his reality is indelicate.

"Karoo Boy" is a scintillating yet incomplete novel. "I feel a pang of bitterness towards my mother for landing me in this backveld dorp where the boys and girls smell the sea in me the way wild birds smell the tameness in freed cagebirds," writes Douglas. A pang of bitterness is all he allows himself, though. His adaptation is admirable, but the void of his own grieving is never resolved. With such forces hoisted upon the adolescent narrator, and with such attention that his parents pay simply to their own grieving, a little rage might have been in order.

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Further unresolved at novel's end is the skillfully constructed mother-son conflict. Puzzlingly, Blacklaws ends the novel with Douglas tracing the path of his all-but-forgotten father.

Given the novel's strong opening, the rudderless finish is confounding. It is as if the unmistakable quality of the writing has not yet filled out the structure of the narrative. Regardless, Blacklaws' next offering will be a much-anticipated event.

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